


Ghosting

by Rumibug



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Angst, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23461300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rumibug/pseuds/Rumibug
Summary: Lloyd isn't sure how to feel about Harumi, good thing her ghost isn't keen on letting him just forget about her.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	1. Burdens

Lloyd isn’t sure what to do after his father is defeated, if he can even call the husk of the man that was the current incarnation of Garmadon his father. He’s only relieved to feel the constant thrum of green energy filling his lungs and speeding through his veins, they give him some form of assurance. 

Like an anchor keeping him tied to the present even though the events of the past few weeks are threatening to pull him back to being powerless, back to fighting his father, back to losing his family, back to her- oh. 

His mind had drifted away from Harumi during the chaos of the final few days of his father’s rule over Ninjago. 

Sure, he had watched her from across the city. 

Watched her knees buckle as ash tangled her hair and debri trapped her in a grave of concrete. 

He hadn’t meant to look, he was clutching Skylor in his arms and should have run but his dumb chest hurts hearing her scream and he whips his head to face her.   
Her eyes meet his and he swears there’s some glimmer of acceptance in her eyes, a plea for forgiveness. 

He guesses that’s why he’s here now.

The sand of the desert clings to his skin as he drives across the dusty roads outside Ninjago city. The heat smothers him and Lloyd wishes he had brought a fan with him or maybe Nya-no he can’t do that.   
He can’t subject the other ninja to fixing his mistakes, they already got sent to another realm for him and Lloyd isn’t exactly sound with the fact that they had brushed nearly dying because of his recklessness as “nothing to worry about”. 

He wants people, no, he wants his family to stop treating him like he’s fragile and might shatter at any second. 

The combined realization that his first kiss stabbed him in the back, resurrected his father and then was crushed by a collapsing apartment complex hit him all at once and his bones felt hollowed out. 

Kai tried to cheer him up with sweets and comic books, but Snickers bars and Skittles can’t mend a broken heart.

Still, it’s not like he talks about Harumi anway, he only flinched when he heard Nya whisper to Zane that the commissioner's team had found her body in the wreckage. 

“The commissioner doesn’t know what to do” Nya says “ The emperor and empress were her legal guardians and she burned them alive.” 

“Why not lay her to rest at the city’s cemetery?” Zane questions. “Would that not be a common procedure within Ninjago City’s law?”  
Nya shakes her head, eyes flickering to Lloyd for a second, she knows he’s eavesdropping and won’t have her baby brother have to deal with his lunatic ex anymore. Lowering her voice she hands Zane the morning newspaper and the Nindroid’s eyes widen. 

Lloyd doesn’t need to see the newspaper to know what the headline is, he’s seen the citizens of ninjago’s protests against the Palace of Secrets on patrols. 

Running across the same roofs he had walked with Harumi the night they met, he watched as masked citizens tattooed the building with expletives about the ex-princess.   
He could have stopped them, knocked the spray can out of their hands and enforced the law like a good vigilante ninja would.

Instead he watches with a mix of emotions stirring in his brain, and decides that confronting them would mean having to face those emotions. 

Tomorrow's tea and all he’s still a kid and can barely understand what happened the past few weeks, let alone how he feels about them.

He tunes back into Nya and Zane’s conversation, trying to pick out what they're saying over the sound of Jay and Cole bickering over the remote.

“The commissioner doesn’t want to bury her in the city she destroyed and start another riot” she explains as Zane nods his head in agreement.  
“Perhaps one of us should go speak with the morgue and cemetery, I can-” Zane is interrupted by Lloyd standing up and reaching for the keys to his bike. 

“Lloyd what are you-” Nya begins but is cut off by Lloyd’s frustrated growl.

“I’m gonna go deal with her, ok?” he bites out. 

He doesn’t mean for it to be so harsh, and the look Nya gives him confirms he’s stepped out of line, FSM she could quirk an eyebrow and incinerate someone will the death glare she produces. 

“Lloyd that is not a wise decision, you are still recovering” Zane urges and Nya nods her head in agreement.

“Guys I’m fine my arm is all healed up, see?” Lloyd bends his arm in a sweeping motion to prove it and Zane flashes a look of concern at Nya. 

“I did not mean physically Lloyd” the Nindroid clarifies, worry laced in each syllable.

Lloyd freezes at that, and somehow sinks even lower into the ground of his anxiety’s. 

Of course Zane is worried about him being crazy. 

He released the serpentine, failed to defeat the overlord, got possesed, failed to save master Wu and then failed to recognize Harumi’s obvious lies. He wouldn’t trust himself either.   
He ignores the other ninja's concern and decides it’s time to end this. Maybe if I lay her to rest I’ll finally get some closure he thinks before pushing hard on the gas pedal and driving through clouds of dust out towards the morgue. 

Time to end this.


	2. Eulogy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lloyd shatters a lightbulb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to note, this takes place between Hunted and March of The Oni, so prime Lloyd has trauma time.

They say when you die you see a bright, hypnotic white light. 

A light that etches itself into your memory, beckons you to follow it with every fiber in your being. 

Harumi tries to imagine the light, plots out every detail it must contain in the moments after the fall that cracked her ribs and splintered her breath. 

She’s great at plotting, she killed the ninja afterall.

The light inches closer into the corners of eyes. She can see it so clearly, feel the warmth enveloping her. 

Death will whisk her off to Mom and Dad and her work in Ninjago is finished. She’s sure Emperor Garmadon must have finished off Lloyd by now. 

Her mind sowers at the thought of the green ninja.

Her enemy.  
Her parents' murderer.  
Her ex-whatever it was he thought they were.

And suddenly, and she swears it’s green, there's a harsh tug where her ankle should be, if dead people had ankles that is. A green, murky darkness that is pulling her away from the comfort of light.

She wonders if she’s going to the bad place, Lloyd destroyed the Cursed realm years ago after Mako, or whatever his name was tried to destroy Ninjago. 

She admired him for his efforts initially, After all possessing the green ninja? It’s brilliant emotional manipulation. 

Lloyd might have the power of Oni and Dragon but he’s too trusting, too soft on the inside. 

And then using that to utterly destroy the ninja emotionally and render them powerless? She doesn’t stop hearing about the ninja’s hollowed faces and flickering powers from Ultra Violet for weeks. 

She finally hears about the ninja’s victory as her lady in waiting is bleaching her hair at her “father’s” request. 

“The blonde roots aren’t attractive to your suitors” the older woman tells her, raking the bleach through her hair. 

The smell of it is suffocating, and with every harsh yank on the thin strands of her hair she hopes, no prays, that stupid ghost will defeat the ninja. 

But moments later Hutchins excitdelty bursts through the door with word that the Ninja have defeated Morro and his army.

The woman envelops Hutchins in a hug and gives one last painful tug at her hair before motioning to Harumi to join the celebration. 

She forces a smile on her face for the thousanth time that week, and silently curses at that stupid ghost for his pathetic loss.

There is a banquet that night, her parents have the palace decorated with strands of bright green lights to celebrate the return of their beloved green ninja. 

The table is lined with warm noodle dishes, expensive meats and mountains of fruit but Harumi knows not to eat too much, or her “mother” will lecture her for hours to come, before she inevitably forces her to spit it back up.

Perfect princesses have perfect figures, she supposes.

But as she picks at her food she realizes the flaw in Morro’s plan, in every other pathetic villain's plan who tried to destroy the green ninja before her.

They all knew the obvious, Lloyd is willing to sacrifice everything for his friends, those stupid five, no-now six ninja. 

And vice versa, the team relies too much on one another, but that is an easy weakness to exploit and prey upon. 

No what they were missing she concludes, was silence.

They were too showy, so bombastic in their plans and presentation that they laid out every card in their hand before the game had even begun. 

She remembers encountering Pythor as a young child in her old village, moments before Samurai X had swooped in before the ninja to save her. 

The anacondrai boasted about stealing the fang blades, monologed about Lloyd releasing the serpentine and uniting them without even trying and cackled about awakening the great devourer as if the ninja were powerless to stop him. 

She supposes they didn’t stop him, but Lord Garmadon did. 

And the ninja would stop Pythor again and again. He was only the first in an endless cycle of showmanship among Ninjago’s evils. 

The overlord knocked down half the city with a spider mech, and announced his plans to half the city giving the ninja ample time to freeze him into oblivion. 

Chen stomped around with an army of anacondrai and had announced and left papers laying around with key pieces of his plan, or at least that’s what she heard from what some ex-employees of his had stated after joining the new Sons of Garmadon.

And as much as she admired his cunning, Morro had fallen victim to this as well. Summoning an army of ghosts and some demon queen from the Cursed Realm without regard for their obvious weakness in a city surrounded by water.

She won’t be so careless. She just needs to keep her cards close to her chest, keep the ninja close to her chest. She ponders if Lloyd would be foolish enough to let a stranger get that close to him, get so close to his precious team. 

He will though, she’s a helpless princess overall.

She can stay quiet.

She is brought back from her memories as the force beneath her feet pulls her down with a final harsh tug. 

She spirals through the deep green and pitch black of the world around her cursing Lloyd’s name with every breath left in her spirit. 

\------------------

Lloyd arrives at the morgue faster than he wants to. 

He almost wants to yell at Jay and Nya for building such perfect bikes for speeding down the open road, but he wants to end this and the sooner the better.  
He parks his bike in front of the building, it stands alone a few miles outside of ninjago city. Thick layers of dust and sand cover it’s roof and cobwebs and nestled between the beams of it’s entrance. 

Lloyd muses that it’s only fitting a morgue looks so dead on the outside. 

He hesitates at the entrance, his hand ghosting over the doorbell. 

He’s gonna have to identify her, confirm it’s her body and not someone else killed in the wreckage he caused by letting her into his life. 

Another smear of blood that stains his hands after every destructive battle he could have prevented.

He wishes Kai were here, his big brother would give him some form of encouragement before making some dumb joke about Harumi’s fashion sense already having killed her long before the building did. 

He wouldn’t have laughed at it, but Kai would anchor him to the ground and help him through it all, taking him out for some emotional support ice cream like he always does when Lloyd is dealing with his mountain of trauma.

Your seventeen, get a grip he snaps at himself. Forcing his thumb to press into the doorbell and let out a pleasant chime.

An attendant of the morgue greets him, the man is so pale he reminds Lloyd of one of the zombies he and Jay had seen in that old horror movie last week.   
“Mr. Garmadon I thought you would be the one here to identify her” the man muses. 

Lloyd forces an emotionless stare, he doesn’t know how to feel but looking disgusted and paranoid probably wouldn’t be very “Green Ninja” like. 

“Yea- well, it only seemed proper,” he says to the morgue attendant. And the man nods in response.

“We need you to identify her, Follow me please” He walks towards a back door, motioning for Lloyd to follow.

The walls begin to close in around him, he can feel the anxiety crushing into him. Panic bubbles in his brain. Out- I need to get out his brain screams and the light bulbs are flickering around him. 

Oh FSM now my stupid powers are losing it too. He sees a wooden door in the corner of his eye with a faded sign of “Bathroom” taped on. 

“BATHROOM” he shouts and the morgue attendant whips his head around at the green ninjas outburst. 

Lloyd quickly composes himself reigning in his panic and the energy threatening to shatter all the lights in the building for just a few seconds longer. 

“I-uh need to use the bathroom” he says before speeding to the wooden door at his left.

He slams the door behind him, coughing as the dust of the clearly dirty bathroom rains down on him. “Aw Gross” he mumbles and rakes his hands through his hair to clean it. 

The bathroom is strangely cold, and Lloyd briefly wonders why they keep the bathroom AC on and not the lobby’s. 

He decides to splash some water on his face, and work on those deep breathing techniques Cole showed him for dealing with panic attacks. 

The mirror in front of him is cracked and the light of the bathroom is only being given from an old lightbulb in the center of the room, giving him even less of a reflection. 

Something creeps it’s way up his spine, a force that’s cold and empty ghosting across his body and his eyes once again drift to the mirror. 

But instead of his own disheveled reflection he sees the familiar green glow of what he knows can only be a ghost, and his heart stops thinking Morro might be back. 

But the figure has long almost silver hair flowing down to its back, and it’s outfit is tattered with deep gashes and a missing sleeve. He finally meets it’s eyes and sees the smeared paint on the figure's face, now a dark green from the transformation. 

Harumi stares back at him, eyes widening with his. 

And with that surge of overwhelming panic the lightbulb shatters above him.


	3. Intangible

Having confronted danger just about every other week of his life, Lloyd Garmadon had developed a full proof plan for being confronted with imposible and/or dangerous beings, creatures, or situations. 

He likes to think it’s been pretty successful, after all he hasn’t died yet, although Kai claims that he’s gotten close enough to death so many times they should trap him bubble wrap and lock him in the bounty until he “gets a sense of self preservation” as the fire ninja so elegantly put it.

But now, face to face with his two worst nightmare enemies, his psychotic ex and a ghost that pulls him back to his possession by Morro-both rolled into one-he can’t find it in himself to disagree with Kai’s bubble wrap plan now. 

Harumi’s translucent form floats in front of him, her eyes wide with what he assumes is either a deranged sense of pride or some form of shock. 

He can’t tell what she’s feeling, after all she was hard to read alive, let alone as a shadowy ghost floating in the chill of a dark bathroom. 

The quiet one’s bleached hair has turned to silvery gray he can only compare to his mom’s, but even then Misako’s hair doesn’t shimmer as unnaturally as the figure in front of him. 

Her eyes are hollow, smeared with a black paint that reminds him of Morro until he remembers that it must have been that god awful jagged red makeup she wore after betraying him. 

The same makeup she wore to smoulder any hope of their relationship, when she kidnapped his mother, resurrected Garmadon-oh god his father that’s another can of worms and then when she nearly murdered his family in front of him.

Laughing in his ear as she held him by the torn fabric of gi on a tram, the bounty collapsing under the weight of the Colossi. 

He guesses the bounty wasn’t the only thing that was crushed by the stone titan his father controlled, if the ghost in front of him proves anything.

But he defeated his father, stopped her plans, his family returned on the backs of actual dragons from the first realm and they won the fight like usual, it was just how his life worked. 

Fighting, trauma, fighting, trauma, fighting-

Right, he has to actually fight now. 

His first step in any plan to face impossible odds and trauma is noticing.

That’s kinda hard to do in a dark bathroom, granted it’s a dark bathroom he caused by letting his powers shatter the one lightbulb in the room, so energy-sphere-lightbulb it is.

He briefly wonders why Harumi isn’t launching a knife at him and just floating before deciding that he doesn’t care, it's her.

The green ninja reaches into his mind and powers up a sphere of shimmering green energy. Illuminating the shattered mirror and dripping faucet. 

Water. 

Right, water sends ghosts back to the cursed realm.

And Harumi just so happens to be floating above the murky and rather questionable waters of an old toilet. 

Perfect.

It seems like she finally notices him after a few minutes, the ghost sneering at him before reaching to her hip for a knife.

She only realises she has no knife, and her hand passes through her hip after Lloyd has launched a blast of energy at her that knocks her feet into the water below. 

Part two of his strategy, fight has been a success.

The water burns Harumi’s toes and she can feel the cells of her body being pulled and stretched by the droplets. Like a thousand needles being crammed into every inch of skin tugging her body apart. She screams in pain and anger focusing her fury at the ninja in front of her. 

“What. was. That?!” she screams pulling her body up from the toilet before collapsing on the splinters of the floor. 

Lloyd looks so stunned at this point he is struggling to find the answer. His eyes look blank and his mouth is open in a sharp “o” as the energy fizzled at his sides.

“Water kills ghosts, why didn’t it-” he says looking at the toilet water like it betrayed him in his moment of need. 

Lloyd’s less than secret strategy for his third step is that he doesn’t have one. 

Fighting’s always worked, even when he had to defeat garmadon by not fighting he was still fighting just fighting using the power of “annoy your father to death by repeating a slogan so he runs out of purple destruction energy before destroying the city-well destroys it more than he already has.”

Harumi’s fingers are white knuckled at this point, curling on the swirls of the rotting wood beneath them, she hisses in pain as the water finally starts to evaporate slightly, the dry air of the bathroom providing some relief to her body trying to tear itself apart before being violently sewn back together.

She glances up at the green ninja, eyes narrowing in on his features. He doesn’t look much different from when she last saw him, minus the gash she gave him on his cheek and black eye Killow gave him in a fight in the weeks before her death.

Still he looks just as exhausted, and although she’d love her empire to be thriving currently she knows garmadon must be gone if Lloyd is still alive.

FSM why is he so hard to kill.

She pushes herself up and micmicks dusting off her outfit, the pads of her fingers phasing through her new body. 

Lloyd stands in defensive crouch, knees bent and palms buzzing with emerald energy. There’s a stiff silence now, like an eerie game of chess. Each player waiting for someone to say something, make the next move, or even explain their situation. 

Harumi loses her patience, she’s dead, she has the right to lose her temper and pulls at the strands of her silver hair. 

“Why did you drag me down here Lloyd.” she says it in almost a growl, snarling at the blond.

“Wait a second I did not bring you back, If anything this has you written all over it” he snaps.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means that coming back from the grave to torture me is very up your alley, princess.”

“Oh that’s rich coming from the green ninja himself, tell me how much more destruction have you caused in my absence” she questions.

“None, I've been busy rebuilding it from the destruction you caused” he snarls, launching another sphere of energy at her.

She dodges it and floats towards the corner of the bathroom.

“I was protecting Ninjago from you” she hisses “But I guess that’s why the all powerful green ninja summoned me from the dead and just tried to drown me in a toilet.”

“I didn’t summon you Harumi, why in Ninjago would I summon you” he shouts.

“I don’t know Lloyd, because your pathetic” 

“How do you even know it was me?” he asks, although it turns into more of a yell than a question. 

“I was pulled back into this world by something green, you tell me Mr. Green Ninja” she sneers and motions at his green gi.

“Not everything green is my fault Harumi.” he says and the ghost makes a face somewhat close to a disgusted pout.   
“Ok well I didn’t come here on my own accord so you better give me some answers or so help me I’ll-” the ex-princess is interrupted by a sharp knock on the door of the bathroom and the sound of hesitant steps by the door.

Lloyd curses under his breath, “The morgue attendant, crap.”

“Mr.Garmadon are you alright, I heard something shatter” the man asks. Lloyd can tell he’s inches from the door, and he’s not sure how finding the ghost of a known terrorist, who is lying dead on his autopsy table, would settle with the attendant. The blonde pulls a finger to his mouth, mimicking a motion of quiet. 

The ex-princess furrows her brow and opens her mouth to protest, before Lloyd charges up a sphere of energy. He imagines something about not wanting to continue swimming in a toilet bowl persuades her to promptly shut up and glare instead. 

“I’m fine sir, I just uh-I slipped!” Lloyd yells across the door, voice strained and back against the old door. 

Harumi hears the man sigh before the knob rattles against Lloyd’s palms “Mr.Garmadon I highly suggest you allow me to help, perhaps I could come in and assist you?” Lloyd pales scanning the room for a way to sneak Harumi out. He can't send her to the cursed realm with water but he can’t leave her to destroy the city again. 

His eyes catch the reflection of the shards of glass dotting the floor, grinning he shouts “Yea go get a broom for me, it’d really help!” 

“Oh dear this old bathroom is quite the disaster, I will fetch us a broom Mr.Garmadon” the attendant says, Lloyd sighing in relief as he hears the heavy steps of the man walking away through the door.

“Now can I ask where we are, Mr.Garmadon?” Harumi says, venom dripping with every syllable. Lloyd glares at her, giving an exasperated sigh “We’re at a morgue.” Harumi’s eyes seem to widen at this and she gasps. Quickly falling from her position in the corner of the room, scrambling to push herself up. Lloyd’s face softens at this and the princess feels a tightness in her chest 

“I’m leaving” she says, chanting the word intangible in her mind and phasing through the door. She can feel her head racing as she sprints down the narrow halls of the morgue. 

Lloyd sprints after her “Harumi, No! We can’t let him see you!” he calls with a whispered shout, sprinting after the ghost.

Harumi doesn’t remember the exact moment the building collapsed but she remembers the seconds before it all happened, the earth shaking beneath her. Walls collapsing under the Colossi, and Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon locking eyes with her for one last second.

Her last battle alive with the Green Ninja isn’t hoping he forgives her, she doesn’t need his pity or forgiveness. She just needs some tangible feeling to lock onto in the moments before her death, craving someone’s understanding of her work.

She tells herself Garmadon gave her all that and more, but the uncertainty that he understood lingered in her life and is haunting her in death. It’s chasing her down a long corridor and dressed in green, eyes filled with pity and regret.

She hopes seeing her body might push into the cursed realm, and let her rot in peace. Instead it’s pairing her with her mortal enemy for some sick pleasure.

She finally reaches the main room, and sees the autopsy table covered in a long white sheet. She inches closer to it, her father used to tell her that people’s spirits lingered by their body’s. That they needed to be close to their body so their family knew where to find them and that way no one was ever alone in life or death.

They never found his body, a giant snake tends to eat it’s kill.

She freezes and is promptly kicked out of her own reflection by Lloyd shouting and the attendant’s exasperation. 

“Sir I promise you I’m interested in more of a uh-tour! I swear let’s just go back and look at-morgue stuff!” 

“Mr. Garmadon I appreciate your fascination but we really must identify the body now.” 

Harumi tries to will her invisibility again, but she can still see her ghostly green boots locked into the floor. Lloyd is arguing with the man but the attendant pushes through walking to the table. Lloyd gasps “Sir I can explain-” as Harumi braces herself for him to discover her. 

Except he walks through her, not missing a beat.

Lloyd’s eyes widen, she stares at the attendant as he pulls back the cloth draping of her body. She looks back to Lloyd.

“Can you see me?”

He nods.

The attendant calls Lloyd and motions him over with his hand. 

“Mr. Garmadon can you confirm this is the body of the former Princess Harumi?”

His eyes flicker between the ghost and her body before forcing out a quiet “yes”

And she’s not an ordinary ghost.


	4. Familiarity

Lloyd decides at five o’clock that afternoon that being haunted by his vengeful ex-girlfriend is worse than dealing with her alive. 

Immediately following their encounter with the attendant, or lack of encounter in Harumi’s case, the princess hastily decides to flee the building and march to see his father in a huff. 

Lloyd is momentarily content with letting her fly off into the city, after all she can’t hurt anyone in her current form and as much guilt as he had over her death she’s grating on his nerves.

But she’s too clever for her own good, and the Green Ninja knows he can’t leave her to wander the desert searching in vain for Garmadon. 

An unattended villain is a dangerous one, he tells himself. Pushing away the murmur of concern and care he has for her; the care he’s always had for her.

So he trails behind her on his bike, sand and dust bellowing out in dirty clouds beneath his feet. The bike is low on gas and Nya is gonna strangle him when he gets back to the bounty for all the scratches the coffin caused.

Oh yeah, he’s also carrying her corpse. 

It’s sealed away of course, underneath a thick wooden coffin. He had agreed to take her body to be buried somewhere it wouldn’t be dug up and likely beaten with a bat. 

Nya would probably beat her corpse with a bat if she could, taking over the city is one thing but nearly killing her brother and her boyfriend? That’s a recipe to have your kneecaps crushed by the master of water. Lloyd makes a mental note to never tell Nya about Harumi’s return.

He wonders if she’d believe him anyway, if any of his teammates would believe that Harumi was magically dragged back to Ninjago from the cursed realm with no explanation or solution to put her back into the grave. 

Even worse she’s invisible to everyone but him so far, and with how worried Nya and Zane seemed to be this morning they might think he’s gone off the deep end if he tried to explain it all.

He can only imagine how that conversation would go:

“Hey guys, I know you said you think I’m going crazy with guilt over Harumi’s death and well my father’s resurrection and then quick abandonment of me haven’t exactly helped but Harumi was resurrected and now she’s stuck in Ninjago haunting me as an un-killable ghost only I can see!”

If they hadn’t sent him to a therapist before that he would for sure be dragged to one after that conversation.

He’s fine though, really. He doesn’t need a therapist to listen to his woes about everyone in his life betraying him and leaving him for dead. Pythor, his friends at Darkley’s, his recently revived father and even his mom. 

Sure, his mom came back, but he’s always swallowed the anger in his chest that had been brewing since the day she left him to suffer at his school for bad boys.

All the trauma of never being good enough as a kid has seeped into his (almost) adult life and every time he has tea with his mom he can see the regret she has etched into the wrinkles by her eyes. She never says it but he knows she wishes he’d found a way to keep their family safe, that as much as she claims to love him she can’t forgive him for that.

Familial stability is overrated anyway. 

He really hates that he can’t fully forgive her either, and he’s seen what deep anger and resentment of someone can turn a person into. After all, she’s floating in front of his bike with her fists balled up and eyes with a deadly focus on getting as far from him as she can. 

“Harumi, why are you so intent on going to see my father? He’s not gonna be able to help you” Lloyd shouts, his voice echoing across the desert. 

She continues to stop ahead of him not bothering to glance in his direction, “I don’t anyone else who was able to return from the dead, he’s my best chance at an answer” she says.

“Harumi, he won’t even be able to see you, what's your brilliant plan for that?” Lloyd quips back.

“I’ll possess someone, I’m a ghost now, green ninja” she says his title with undeniable venom and he speeds his bike up to drive next to her.

He frowns “It took Cole weeks to be able to possess a doorknob let alone a person, what makes you think you’ll be able to do it so easily?”.

She smirks at that “If you really thought that I’m as spineless as your friend then you really are pathetic Lloyd” she snaps.

Harumi swears Lloyd’s eyes flash a deadly crimson as he hits the gas hard, swerving his bike directly in front of her. The coffin rattles from the hard stop of his brakes and sand stains his emerald suit in dusty clouds.

“Did I hit a nerve?”she asks, narrowing her eyes on Lloyd. 

“Listen here Harumi” he growls “I don’t care if you insult me, but if you even mention my family I won’t hesitate to-”

“Hesitate to what, Lloyd? Hurt me?”she sneers. “You don’t have the backbone Lloyd, after all you love me” she cackles. Lloyd’s face seems to contract into anger, soften, and turn smug in the span of a second.

“You're wrong I don’t love you, but I’m not gonna hurt you and stoop to your level” he says Harumi grins satisfied with her remaining control over the green ninja. 

“But Nya, the master of water, would.” he smirks as the green color seems to drain from her face in a mere second. 

Harumi doesn’t really remember this Lloyd very well, even when he had captured her Lloyd was at his worst snarky. The blonde was usually so sickeningly kind and understanding, pleading endlessly for her to stop the madness and toss away her plans; for him. But now he seems downright dangerous, she notices the red in his eyes and the fangs he inherited from his father warning her to stand down. 

She’s not sure which version of him is more insufferable.

“Your right about one thing Harumi, my father is the only person in Ninjago who might know what this is all about” he says “But you're never gonna find him wandering the desert.”

The quiet one raises a brow at this, folding her arms against her chest.

“I need you out of my hair as much as you need me out of yours, so if you promise to keep your sadistic nature in check, I’ll bring you to Garmadon.” 

She grits her teeth as Lloyd holds his hand out, wearily shaking it before realizing her hand slipped through his. 

“Ok green ninja lead the way” she says trailing behind him.

Lloyd grins revving his engine before making a sharp turn in the opposite direction.

“You mean to tell me you let me go in the wrong direction for hours?!” she huffs.

Well played Lloyd.

~~~

It’s half past seven when the two finally reach Kryptarium prison, Lloyd’s motorcycle is caked in a thick layer of sand and Harumi’s legs are killing her. Or have they already killed her? She pushes away the disturbing thought, and instead decides to focus on how much they wouldn’t have hurt if Lloyd had just given her the directions hours earlier. 

His smug smile despite the state of his bike tells her he would have had her walking in circles if he had his way.

Kryptarium prison is just how she remembers it, tall iron walls loom over acres of sand. Workers in bright yellow vests are patching up the hole in the wall her emperor made when he chucked Lloyd through stone like a rag doll, and she notices the green ninja tense as they pass it.

Having run a crime empire of her own, Harumi knows the exact ins and outs of Ninjago’s greatest prison facility. 

She’s got some form of connection with nearly every major villain held inside its walls, and the thought of rebuilding the Sons of Garmadon plays in her mind like a broken record as she and Lloyd enter the facility.

The warden seems to be napping at the front desk, legs stretched out in front of him and hands tucked lazily behind his head to mock a pillow. Lloyd clears his throat in an attempt to jostle the warden.

By the third attempt the warden jolts awake launching into a fighting stance.

“Mechanic I will not let you escape for the fifth time this-” the warden is jostled out of his position after seeing Lloyd, who stifles a laugh. 

“Lloyd! So good to see you, It’s been a while!” 

“Yea it has, I’m glad to see this place finally being patched back up after the SOG take over” Lloyd says motioning at the various repairs being made around them. The walls are being filled in with cement, and the floors paved with new stone. 

Harumi feels some sense of pride in the destruction her followers had caused before it morphs into impatience to see Garmadon again.

The commissioner nods his head, eyes trailing to the new watch tower at the center of the building “Yes, well after Princess Harumi took over the building the inmates were less than respectful of the property.”

Harumi huffs angrily at the title, she isn’t a “Princess” she’s the Quiet One! Leader of the Sons of Garmadon and right hand to the rightful ruler of Ninjago. Not some delicate toy the Emperor and Empress painted her to be.

“I wish they had burned this building to the ground, with you in it” she sneers, pride quickly vanishing when Lloyd gives her a glare and she realizes the commissioner can't hear her. 

As they continue to walk the title stews in her mind. Is that her legacy? A broken princess turned failed ruler? She wishes she had tangible hands to cross the title out and a voice to silence it.

Lloyd gives a glance at the ghost before redirecting his efforts to listening to the warden, “I assume you came here to visit, well you know who” the warden says already pulling a ring of bronze and silver keys from his pants pocket. 

“Yes I need to speak with my fa-Garmadon” he corrects himself without knowing why. Garmadon might say he has no son but Lloyd knows he has a father behind those bars.

The warden leads them through the halls of the prison, rambling about the prisoners held inside. Harumi doesn’t pay much attention, she has no interest in pestering the Mechanic and his goons, or FSM forbid that fool Fuji-Dove. 

“And here we have our newest guests, Ultra Violet and Killow” the warden says with slight concern. Ultraviolet seems to be gliding her tongue across a knife and Killow is scribbling with a stone, pressing indents into the steel like it’s tissue paper.

Lloyd can only nod his head looking to his ghostly companion, he figured they would pass these two eventually. But he desperately needs Harumi to not try phasing them out or possessing someone at this moment. 

He breathes a sigh of relief when he notices she’s frozen in front of the cell. The Quiet One just stares at them as thoughts mix around her mind.

Ultraviolet and Killow seem content, there is no anguish that she’s dead. She wonders if they mourned their leader, if anyone did. Her answers are presented to her on a silver platter when Killow reveals his newest painting to Lloyd as some form of a peace offering. 

Ultra Violet cackles at the crudely drawn portrait of Harumi being stood on by Lloyd. There are charcoal x’s over her eyes and Lloyd has a shiny gold aura around him. 

“Do you like it? I've really found peace with art, I even sent this to my mum!” Killow shouts and Lloyd forces a smile before motioning for Harumi to follow him out. She feels something catch in her throat, she recognizes the hollow chill that pushes into her, a feeling 

she last felt when Lloyd let her parents die all those years ago.

Betrayal.

She had expected her grunts to abandon her, after all they were never really invested in her ideology, they just liked the pay in solid gold she’d stolen from the emperor and empress. But Killow and Ultra Violet? She’d hired them so early on in her planning, they had 

been there with Mr.E for years while she plotted to revive Emperor Garmadon. They were an irreplaceable piece of her operation-her 

“Family?” a voice cuts in.

Lloyd stands next to her, the guard is gone now and it occurs to her that they had already arrived at the iron clad doors of Garmadon’s cell. How had Lloyd been listening to her though-

“You've been talking out loud” he says plainly, turning around to punch in a code on the wall.

She flushes, the pathetic green ninja did not need to hear her lament about her weaknesses. 

“They were not my family Lloyd, they were pawns in bringing my real family back to life” she sneers and the green ninja stiffens. 

“And my father is your real family now, huh?” he asks, turning back to the ghost behind him. 

His eyes are cold and he looks distant. Like he’s watching a story unfold that he already knows the ending to.

She nods and walks to the door as the locks begin to groan slowly opening the doors, Lloyd sighs and looks at her. Searching for any remains of the girl he used to like so much, but she’s determined to see this through. 

And much as he hates to admit it, he needs to see his father if he wants any hope of getting rid of her.

The gates open and her eyes widen at the glass bell jar trapping the emperor in the center of the room. Lloyd steadies his breathing and starts to walk ahead along the narrow path. 

“Welcome to the family”


End file.
